Let’s celebrate two years
of A Serious Bunburyist with a biscuit. Last year I featured a recipe for Cream
of Celery Soup (here) from Simon Hopkinson’s Second Helpings of Roast Chicken [2001]. Hopkinson’s book contains an
eclectic collection of recipes that he amassed over the years. One of these
recipes is for Arnhem Biscuits or Arnhemse
Meisjes from Roald Dahl’s Memories
with Food at Gipsy House [1991] (republished in 1996 and 2012 as the Roald Dahl’s Cookbook). Hopkinson
describes Arnhemse Meisjes as “quite
wonderful”. Dahl waxed slightly more lyrical about the Dutch cookies: “They
were simply marvelous. I cannot quite tell you why, but everything about them,
the crispness, the flavour, the way they melted away down your throat made it
so you couldn’t stop eating them.”
Are Arnhemse Meisjes the best biscuits in the world? Dahl thought so. Coming
from the author that penned some of the most glorious and tantalizing
descriptions of food in all of children’s literature, this is high praise
indeed. How did the recipe fall into Dahl’s hands? He writes that after tasting
the biscuit at a book signing in the Dutch city of Arnhem, he requested and
received the recipe from Albert Hagdorn, the baker that developed the cookie.
Happily, Dahl decided to include Arnhemse
Meisjes in his cookbook. The recipe makes about 35-40 biscuits. The asides
are Dahl’s.
- 190 gr plain flour
- 100 gr milk
- 4 drops lemon juice (more later if necessary)
- 5 gr fresh yeast
- 105 gr unsalted butter (divided equally into 5 pieces of 21 gr each)
- a pinch of salt, only if using unsalted butter
- rock sugar is used instead of a floured surface (I used sugar cubes that I lightly crush with a rolling pin)
1. Mix together the flour,
milk, lemon juice and yeast, adding a pinch of salt if necessary.
2. With an electric beater
on high speed, beat 1 piece of butter into the mixture for about 2 minutes.
Continue in the same way for the remaining butter pieces.
3. Wrap the dough in cling
film and refrigerate overnight so that it is easier to handle.
4. Preheat the oven to 275°F
/ 140°C / Gas Mark 1 and
line your baking sheet with non-stick baking paper.
5. Dredge your rolling surface with the crushed sugar cubes (rock
sugar), then roll out the dough over the sugar, sprinkling it with some more
crushed sugar and continue to roll until very thin.
6. With a biscuit cutter, cut out the dough. (Ovals are the
traditional shape.)
7. Place the biscuits on the lined baking sheets and sprinkle with
more crushed sugar.
8. Bake for 30-45 minutes or until crisp and lightly golden.
Some notes and thoughts. A
standing mixer equipped with a paddle takes the work out of making this dough,
which resembles a smooth taffy. Rolling this
dough isn’t too tricky if you work quickly. I aim for a finished thickness of
about 1/8 of an inch. This produces an extremely crisp yet flakey cookie.
And while we are on the subject of crispness, Hopkinson provides a
helpful bit of advice: “I noticed that when the biscuits had turned ‘slightly
golden’ they were not exactly ‘crisp’. But then this is the case with all
biscuits: they do not fully crisp up until left to cool. I only point this out
so that you do not feel tempted to cook further (to a darker colour, which
ruins them) just so that they turn crisp while still in the oven.”
Roald Dahl and Simon Hopkinson have authored similar yet remarkably
individualist cookbooks. Their books present a diverse collection of favorite
and meaningful recipes inspired by each author’s palate and memories. As I look
back on the recipes featured during this site’s short two year run, it seems to
me that A Serious Bunburyist—more by happenstance than design—isn’t too far off
the Dahl and Hopkinson model: a varied and idiosyncratic selection of recipes
that that hold a strong personal allure. So until my dear, invalid friend
Bunbury explodes, more of the same to come.
